9. Hannah Mary Tabbs

07/25/22 • 29 min

Lucy Worsley investigates the crimes of Victorian women from a contemporary, feminist perspective.

This time, Lucy explores the case of Hannah Mary Tabbs, who was very good at being very bad.

An African-American woman living in Philadelphia in the 1880s, Hannah Mary was arrested after the discovery of the headless, limbless torso of her lover, Wakefield Gaines.

With the help of Philadelphian historian Annie Anderson, Lucy discovers what life was like for African-American women living in the city only two decades after the end of slavery. Social reformers, keen to promote their interests, encouraged black women to adopt high moral standards of temperance, modesty, deference, and strict sexual mores.

But as Lucy discovers with Professor Kali Nicole Gross who has written a book about the case, Hannah Mary Tabbs was having none of this. She lived life on her own terms, blurring her identity, lying when it suited her and intimidating others to turn a blind eye to her affair with a man 10 years her junior.

We hear Hannah Mary’s own words as she tried to talk her way out of trouble by attempting to shift blame to the man co-accused of killing her lover.

To gain a contemporary perspective, Lucy and Kali ask how reliable the confessions extracted from black suspects by white police officers are, even now. To what extent is racial profiling relevant to this case? And what does this case say about the relationship between the black and white communities in the US?

And, we find out what really happened to Wakefield Gaines at the hands of Hannah Mary Tabbs.

Producer: Jane Greenwood Readers: Moya Angela and Jonathan Keeble Sound Design: Chris Maclean

A StoryHunter production for BBC Radio 4

Lucy Worsley investigates the crimes of Victorian women from a contemporary, feminist perspective.

This time, Lucy explores the case of Hannah Mary Tabbs, who was very good at being very bad.

An African-American woman living in Philadelphia in the 1880s, Hannah Mary was arrested after the discovery of the headless, limbless torso of her lover, Wakefield Gaines.

We hear Hannah Mary’s own words as she tried to talk her way out of trouble by attempting to shift blame to the man co-accused of killing her lover.

And, we find out what really happened to Wakefield Gaines at the hands of Hannah Mary Tabbs.

Producer: Jane Greenwood Readers: Moya Angela and Jonathan Keeble Sound Design: Chris Maclean

A StoryHunter production for BBC Radio 4

Previous Episode

8. Esther Lack

Lucy Worsley investigates the crimes of 19th century women in the UK, North America and beyond from a contemporary, feminist perspective.

Here, Lucy tells the story of the murderess Esther Lack and asks whether she was a cold-blooded child killer, or a loving mother driven to despair by poverty and ill health.

In the early hours of the morning at the 22nd of August 1865 John Lack, a nightwatchman at a warehouse on the south bank of the River Thames, walked the short distance back to his home, three tiny, overcrowded rooms in a squalid alley called Skin Market Place, and discovered a scene of unimaginable horror.

His wife Esther had taken his razor and cut the throats of their three youngest children, Christopher aged ten, Eliza aged six and baby Esther who was just two.

Lucy visits London’s South Bank with historian Rosalind Crone to get a sense of Esther’s life and the desperate circumstances that led her to kill her own children. She had given birth to 12 children over 20 years and six of them, including a set of triplets, died in infancy. Friends and family described her as a decent woman and a loving mother, but she was nearly blind, and was suffering from fits and infections.

To gain a contemporary perspective on the Esther Lack case, Lucy talks to Dr Gwen Adshead, a forensic psychiatrist and psychotherapist who has a particular interest in mothers who harm or kill their children.

Lucy asks what might have been Esther’s state of mind when she committed this horrendous crime. Are mothers who kill their children usually mentally ill? What modern understanding of neonatal mental health can we bring to this case?

And is there a link between poverty and harm to children that remains to this day?

Producer: Jane Greenwood Readers: Clare Corbett and Jonathan Keeble Sound Design: Chris Maclean

A StoryHunter production for BBC Radio 4

Next Episode

10. Mad, Bad And Dangerous To Know

In this final episode of Lady Killers, Lucy Worsley and Dr Rosalind Crone look back and discuss the last four cases and the issues and themes they share.

Together they re-examine two of Britain’s most notorious serial killers, Amelia Dyer who’s thought to have killed hundreds of babies and children and Mary Ann Cotton who murdered three of her husbands and numerous children and step-children. Over in the United States they look back at Hannah Mary Tabbs, who killed her lover and back in London delve into the sad case of Esther Lack, the mother who murdered three of her own children.

Lucy and Ros dig deeper into the social issues and circumstances that helped create these murderesses. They look back at an era when newspapers were booming and examine the part the press played in shaping the stories of these women and how they were presented to a scandal hungry public. With that in mind they chat through the new discoveries sweeping through society in terms of toxicology and new understandings around mental health. Finally they scrutinise all eight cases and ask, what has changed today that could have made a difference?

Producer: Alex Baxter Sound design: Chris Maclean

A StoryHunter production for BBC Radio 4